Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

On preferences for being self-employed

The concept of procedural utility assumes that agents not only receive utility from outcomes but also attach an independent value to the procedures that lead to these outcomes. This paper analyzes whether the preferences that underlie procedural utility are homogeneous using the case of independence at the workplace. I exploit the event of German reunification to assign preferences for independence ...

Participation Following Sudden Access

The German reunification experiment provided sudden access to previously unavailable financial products, supported by knowledgeable practitioners. This setting offers new perspectives on participation, inertia, and product diffusion. Controlling for characteristics, East Germans experienced a jump in securities participation to a level comparable to West Germans’ participation immediately following ...

Explaining the low labor productivity in East Germany – A spatial analysis

This paper sheds light on the transferability of human capital in periods of dramatic structural change by analyzing the unique event of German reunification. We explore whether the comparatively low labor productivity in East Germany after reunification is caused by the depreciation of human capital at reunification, or by unfavorable job characteristics. East German workers should have been hit harder ...

Inequality trends for Germany in the last two decades: A tale of two countries

In this paper we first document inequality trends in wages, hours worked, earnings, consumption, and wealth for Germany from the last twenty years. We generally find that inequality was relatively stable in West Germany until the German reunification, and then trended upwards for wages and market incomes, especially after about 1998. Disposable income and consumption, on the other hand, display only ...

The Savings Behavior of East and West Germans - Theoretical Predictions and Empirical Evidence

Precautionary Savings and Self-Selection: Evidence from the German Reunification 'Experiment'

Who stays, who goes, who returns? East–West migration within Germany since reunification

We study the determinants of East–West migration within Germany during the period 1990–2006, using administrative data, the German Microcensus and the German Socio-Economic Panel. We find that in addition to income prospects and employment status, two well-known determinants of migration, psychological and social factors play an important role in determining the migration decision. Men and women move ...

Distributional effects of imputed rents in five European countries

Most empirical distributional studies of well-being in developed countries rely on distributions of disposable income. From a theoretical point of view this practice is contentious since a household’s command over resources is determined not only by its spending power over commodities it can buy in the market but also on resources available to the household members through non-market mechanisms such ...

To Claim or Not to Claim: Estimating Non-Take-Up of Social Assistance in Germany and the Role of Measurement Error

Biography and Life History Data in the German Socio Economic Panel (Up to Wave X, 2007)